AGN OF PRINGESX- 
Ke ig 
ey 24 as 


Little Books on Religion 


Edited by W. Ropertson Nicoti, LL.D. 


AIDS. TO BELIEF 


LITTLE BOOKS ON RELIGION 
Cloth Elegant, 1s. 6@. each. 


Christ and the Future Life. 
By R. W. Datz, D.D., LL.D. 


The Seven Words from the Cross. 
By W. Rospertson Nico.t, M.A., LL.D. 


The Visions of a Prophet. 
By Prof. Marcus Dons, D.D. 


The Four Temperaments. 
By ALEx. WuyTeE, D.D. 


The Upper Room. 
By Joun Watson, M.A., D.D. 


The Unity and Symmetry of the Bible. 
By Prof. J. M. Gisson, M.A., D.D. 


Gospel Questions and Answers. 
By Prof. James DENNEY, D.D. 


Why be a Christian ? 
By Prof. Marcus Dops, D.D. 


Four Psalms. 
By Prof. G. A. Smitu, D.D. 


The Holy Father and the Living Christ. 
By P. T. Forsyru, D.D. 


From Strength to Strength. 
By J. H. Jowett, M.A. 


The Restored Innocence. 
By R. J. CAMPBELL, B.A. 


Heredity and the Gospel. 
By GreorcE Jackson, B.A. 


Christian. Perfection. 
By P. T. Forsyru, D.D. 


LONDON: HODDER & STOUGHTON 
27 Paternoster Row 


FALDS TO. BELIEF 


BEING SERMONS PREACHED IN THE 
CATHEDRAL CHURCH OF LONDONDERRY 
DURING THE SUNDAY EVENINGS OF 


LENT 1899 


BY THE 
Ricut Rev. G. A. CHADWICK, D.D. 


LORD BISHOP OF DERRY AND RAP. RES, 
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$4 


» wy ga 1931 
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“A yeicar sew 


NEW YORK 
DODD, MEAD AND CoO. 
149-151 FIFTH AVENUE 


Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2022 with funding from 
Princeton Theological Seminary Library 


_https://archive.org/details/aidstobeliefbeind0chad 


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I 
PAGE 
WHAT MAY BE EXPECTED? ; ‘ I 
II 
THE BIBLE AND THE FAITH, . : 21 
III 
THE HIGHER CRITICISM AND THE 
FAITH, - : : 5 41 


IV 


THE AGES BEFORE CHRIST, : phus63 


Vv 


THE AGES SINCE CHRIST,. , Od 


vi AIDS TO BELIEF 


VI 


TIIE PORTRAYING OF CHRIST, . 9) LO5 


NOTE A TO SERMON IIL, - ° .* 129 


NOTE B TO SERMON IIL, . : rae hs 2 32 


I 


WHAT MAY BE EXPECTED? 


‘Pilate saith unto Him, What is truth?’— 
JOHN xviii. 38. 

Wuy should one preach a course 
of evidential sermons? Without 
doubt there are happy and 
simple believers for whom this 
whole subject is unwelcome. 
But there are also many, 
especially young people, who 
may be saved much pain and 
temptation by learning how to 
look at such subjects; and I 
am told, by those who have 
best means of knowing, that — 


such a course might, with the 


2 AIDS TO BELIEF 


blessing of God, be very use- 
ful’ in: this. city, I> am: not 
going, however, to preach a 
book of evidences. The proofs 
of the Christian faith are such 
that whoever expects to hear a 
complete statement in half a 
dozen sermons will always be 
much mistaken; nor should he 
desire this. His duty is to take 
as much trouble in the matter ot 
his immortal soul as he would 
readily give to the interests of 
his health or his profession. My 
object is to remind you of some 
all-important facts which lie 
outside the beaten tracks of 
evidential controversy, and this 
evening, in the first place, to 
show you what it is unreason- | 


able to expect in the way of 


WHAT MAY BE EXPECTED? 3 


proofs, and what you are entitled 
to look for. And I hope to 
convince you, as I am myself 
with all -my heart persuaded, 
that the faith of Jesus, which is 
the loveliest, is also the most 


reasonable and best attested of 

a 

rea 

tf 

Tt 
% 


all the influences which inspire ~ 
and uplift mankind. } a 
First among the perplexities 
which disturb inquiring minds I 
put this: Why should perplexi- }. 
ties exist at all? Why should 
not religious truth be as plain 
as the sun in the skies? Why 
should faith and not only logic 
be required for it? Why should 
not the creed be as certain, as 
self-evident, as the multiplica- 
tion table? But have you 


never observed that those truths 


4 AIDS TO BELIEF 


which are quite free from per- 
plexity, which seem—I_ say 
‘seem’—to demand no _ faith, 
may instruct the brain, but fail 
to influence the soul? As you 
are no better, not more generous 
or trustworthy, for knowing that 
twice two are four, so you may 
go on to the differential calculus 
without becoming a whit braver, 
truer, or more pure. Now, the 
task of religion is to purify and 
soften and uplift you, much 
more than to develop your brain 
power. And not religion alone, 
but all the influences which 
elevate character, are such as 
you may, if you choose, reject. 
You can deny that your mothe 
loves you—not to treat you 


kindly would be indecent—or 


Pee ee ee 


WHAT MAY BE EXPECTED? 5 


that your children care for any- 


thing but their maintenance, or 


that your generous friend, when ‘ 


he shared your reproaches and 
made your cause his own, had 
any finer motive than to win 
praise, to ingratiate himself, and 
to play the patron. Only the 
truths which the heart must 
co-operate with the brain in 
grasping can possibly educate 


the heart equally with the brain. 


I do not say the heart without 


the head. You are not asked 


to believe without evidence in 
mother or child or friend, yet 
the evidence does not coerce 
your belief: you must make 
your choice, and either exercise 
faith, responding willingly to the 


appeal of goodness outside your- 


AD 


6 AIDS TO BELIEF 


self, and thus become loving and 
true, or else refuse to ‘trust, 
and then your soul must shrivel 
and dry up. And is it any 
wonder that religion, which pro- 
fesses to purify and cleanse your 
heart and save your soul, should 
make the same demand, and 
refuse, as it does refuse flatly, 
to trample down your power of 
choice and moral judgment? 
You do not think a modern 
sea - -captain. heroic because he 
Steers: for America, for now it 
is as certain that America lies 
beyond the Atlantic as that 
Liverpool is across the Channel. 
But \ what about Columbus, gazing 
ae waters ‘which no keel had 
ever ploughed upon horizons 


which no eye had ever searched, 


PL ry 


WHAT MAY BE EXPECTED? 7 


unshaken by hope deferred, un- 
appalled by murmurs or even 
by mutiny, until at last the 
flickering light in the dim dis- 
tance told that his long trial 
was over and he had won his 
immortal fame? Yes, his ‘trial.’ 
And it is so with us: the trial 
of our faith, much more precious 
than of gold that perishes, is 
found unto praise and honour 
ance clory. 2 ¢There:.is.«neéftther 
praise nor honour in believing 
the properties of a triangle or 
a square, because there is no 
room for doubt about them. 

I can fancy that some one is 
objecting, ‘This might be very 
well if you did not teach that 
doubt is sinful, but you must 


not call it, at the same time, 


8 AIDS TO BELIEF 


a sin and a means of discipline 
for the soul.’ 

But I have not called it sin. 
There is indeed a sinful unbelief 
in God, just as there is a vile 
and degrading unbelief in human 
nature. But the unbelief which 
Scripture denounces is not ever 
the desire to reach truth, nor 
caution in the quest: it is the 
immoral rejection of it when 
perceived; not the search, but 
the turning of the back upon 
it. Were not the Bereans noble, 
who searched the Scripture 
whether these things were so? 
And did not Jesus say: If I 
had not come and spoken unto 
them, they had not had sin; but 
now have they both seen and 
hated? Yes, hated. Their soul, 


ee SS a 


WHAT MAY BE EXPECTED? 9 


not their brain, perpetrated the 
unbelief which condemns the 
soul. It is true that all our 
sorrows, and mental trouble 
among the rest, though not 
sin, are the result of sin, of 
our fallen state ; and if we were 
nearer to God we should not 


doubt Him. But no wise man 


says, when you are tortured by © 


toothache, ‘This happens be- 
cause you are a fallen creature ; 
go pray. And I should just 
as willingly speak so to the 
sufferer of bodily as of mental 
anguish. 

‘Well, then,’ another says, ‘let 
us grant that the heart as well 
as the intellect is needed, and 
for a moral religion we must 


only expect moral certainties; 


10 AIDS TO BELIEF 


nea 


yet surely what I am thus to 
receive should at least explain 
all my perplexities and answer 
all my questions—my trustful 
inquiries. Mystery, the problems 
which you refuse even to attempt 
to solve, these are the reasons why 
I hesitate’ It is clear, however, 
that the object of religion is not 
philosophy, but worship —the 
restoration of the lost soul to 
God—and it formally refuses to 
explain all the mighty problems 
by which our life is enclosed 
on every side. We see as in a 
mirror dimly. The Word is a 
lamp to guide our feet; not to 
illuminate the distant mountain 
ranges, and the forests in which 
the winds are sobbing far away. 


You will inquire in vain, for 


WHAT MAY BE EXPECTED? II 


instance, ‘How can a good God 
and a world of pain and sin 
exist together?’ For this is a 
question clearly of philosophy, 
though men do reject the faith 
because it does not explain, 
nor even attempt to explain, the 
origin of physical and mental 
evil. That is to say, they reject 
the medicine because they want 
to know how disease began. 
Further, I ask you to observe care-. 
fully that it is not against Chris- 
tianity as such that this objection 
lies. It would be just as power- 
ful if Christ had never lived. It 
is an argument against all belief 
in a good God, all theistic 
systems, equally. So far as it 
has any force it goes to prove 


either that there is no God, or 
b 


12 AIDS TO BELIEF 


else that He does not care about 
the difference between good and 
evil. Well, then, if I reject God 
altogether, have I got rid of this 
problem of the origin of evil? 
I have enlarged it into the 
heavier and more urgent problem 
of explaining the origin of either 
good or evil; I cannot now prove 
that they exist. To explain or 
defend morality without God, 
law without a Lawgiver, is the 
despair of all sceptical systems. 
In vain do they assure me that 
what is profitable, that is good. 
In vain, because I know the 
difference. I know that self- 
sacrifice was not evolved by ages 
of struggle to exist, in which the 
weakest always perished for the 


advancement of the race. The 


WHAT MAY BE EXPECTED? 13 


inventor of the steam-engine was 
a great benefactor of his race, 
but his usefulness does not set 
him in the same rank with the 
martyrs for righteousness. The 
difference between the two is 
profound and spiritual. A bad 
investment and a sin, a hurt 
and a moral soil, are not in the 
same category. Nay, to question | 
whether an act is profitable spoils | 
the moral beauty of it; and there | 
are plenty of acts, clearly and | 
demonstrably profitable to the | 
individual and the race, which — 


morality forbids. Suppose that ; : 


I am walking after dark beside. . 


a precipice with a miscreant who | ./ 


is using enormous wealth for the | 
vilest purposes, to ruin and de-. 


grade and trample on his fellows, 


Es, 


14 AIDS TO BELIEF 


eee! Se ee 


| and as we walk he confesses that 


his life is a burden and a curse 


to himself. Suppose that his 


\ next heir will spend his bound- 


\ less wealth for the blessing of 
‘mankind. Now tell me, why 


‘should I not push him over? 


Why should an atheist shrink 
from such a murder? Only be- 
cause he feels, most irrationally 
upon his principles, but by a deep 
instinct, the difference between 


what is expedient and what 


,, is right. The recognised and 


| classical case, by which to test 


| whether sin is mere temporal 


| inexpediency, is suicide. In 


cases where life is a grievous 


| burden, why not end it? The 
'** problem is exactly where Shake- 


‘speare left it, and the two 


——— 


WHAT MAY BE EXPECTED? I5 


arguments which he found 
against suicide are both re- 
ligious. One is the dread of 
something after death, The 
other is that the Almighty hath 
fixed His canon ’gainst self- 
slaughter. Commonly, indeed, 
the two things, expediency and 
right, coincide, and the Christian 
knows why: it is because there 
is a God who judgeth the earth. 
But even when they coincide 
they differ, as the vibration of 
chords differs from the soul in 
the music which thrills the violin- 


ist, even though they are insep- 


arable. Now, it is clear that | 


either Christianity or theism or 
atheism is true. Yet they are 
all confronted by this problem 


of the origin of evil, which there- 


t 


16 AIDS TO BELIEF 


fore can be no reason for reject- 
ing the faith. 

Nor is this all. Our religion 
at least explains why the mys- 
tery should oppress us, when it 
tells us that moral evil did not 
originate here. If it began upon 
our level we might expect to 
understand its beginning; but 
it is otherwise if it is an im- 
ported article, infecting us from 
beings so much greater than we, 
and moving amid such different 
conditions, that probably no 
explanation could force its 
way into the little minds of 
men. 

In the nature of things, I have 
this evening been at work only 
in the removing of hindrances, 


and I feel deeply that in itself 


a 


WHAT MAY BE EXPECTED? 17 


this is not enough to satisfy a 
human soul, Let me then re- 
mind you, in conclusion, of some 
things which your human nature 
is entitled to demand, but can 


never receive anywhere but from 


the faith of Jesus. Professor . 


Tyndall said, a quarter of a cen- | ay 


tury ago, that the religious in- 
stinct in man had an immovable 
basis, and that the first duty of 
science now was to meet its 
demands. Did he ever make an 
attempt? Does any one believe 
that science can or will seriously 
attempt to satisfy the religious 
instinct? And yet how great a 


thing is this! How vast a pro- 


portion of most elevating thought 


and aspiration lies beyond the | 


senses, beyond science! (a) There : 


YY 


18 AIDS TO BELIEF 


is contemplation. I am haunted 


by 
‘The subtle thoughts which fly 
And shun the sense, like flower-smells, the 
: closer we draw nigh.’ 


_. (6) And there is love. For do 
not all pure and lofty human 
loves seem ever to stretch be- 
‘yond themselves, to become sacrar 


| mental, to reach out and up, like 


|. “Nature, which ever rises from 


a eG EL 


“a. solid stem to fine leaf and subtler 
“,. perfume, from the base of the 
_ mountain to the pinnacle wrapped 

©. in mist, from swelling billow to 
iridescent foam, all that is visible 
‘reaching out its hands to the 
ae Unseen? (c) Again, there is the 
2 craving for immortality. ‘If the 
wages of Virtue were dust, Would 
she have heart to endure for the 


life of the worm or the fly?’ 


Set nies Se 


WHAT MAY BE EXPECTED? 19 


(dq) Last and greatest, there is 
the mighty yearning for purity, 
for the recovery of moral health. 
Who shall satisfy these? Science 
should take note of them, one 
thinks, as keenly as of other 


longings—of the restlessness, at 


e e 4) 
certain seasons, of the salmon in/”’ 


the river and the wild swan on the 0: 


lake. And if these find their 
goal, surely there must be some- 
where a Satisfaction, a response 


from fact, to the finest instincts 


of what is, at least, the loftiest of. 


the mammalia. Is he alone the 
fool of Nature? Yet there is no 
answer, no Satisfaction, save in 
Him Who said to the lost of old, 
‘Go and sin no more,’ and made 
them saints—Who says, I am the 


Resurrection and the Life, and 


20 AIDS TO BELIEF 


proves Himself the Resurrection 
by being visibly the Life, the life of 
all goodness and nobility, of our 
virtues, our philanthropies, our 
hope for the degraded, the life of 
barbarous nations clothed and in 
their right mind, and the satis- 
faction of the highest desires of 
men, who knowing Him know 


the Father also. 


II 


THE BIBLE AND THE FAITH 


‘Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think 
that ye have eternal life: and they are they 
which testify of Me. And ye will not come unto 
Me, that ye may have life.".—JOHN v. 39, 40. 


IT is often overlooked that our 
Lord in this saying condemns a 
false and mischievous notion of 
the Scriptures, and shows what 
their true function is. There is 
nothing in the Greek to tell us 
whether He asserts that the Jews 
do actually search the Scriptures 
because they give them honour 
(although a mistaken honour), or 


bids them search and not be con- 
‘ 21 


22 AIDS TO BELIEF 


tent in their delusion. ‘Search 
the Scriptures,’ or ‘ye search the 
Scriptures ’—the Greek will bear 
either rendering. But what is 
clear is this: the Jews were not 
anxious for any higher life, be- 
cause they fancied they had it 
already safe and complete in 
their orthodoxy, in the roll of 
their manuscripts. ‘In them ye’ 
—the word is emphatic—‘ ye 
think ye have eternal life. And 
ye will not come unto Me, that 
ye may have life.’ Their super- 
stitious contentment drugged 
down and stupefied the higher 
cravings of the soul of man, To 
quote a phrase, the true meaning 
of which is excellent, but the 
expression most unfortunate, the 


Bible, and the Bible alone, was 


aba nacre 


THE BIBLE AND THE FAITH 23 


the religion of these Jews. It 
should have been their mariner’s 
compass, their explorer’s chart, 
their map. It should not have 
been the resting-place, but the 
sure guide to that: their school- 
master to bring them to Christ. 
As long as they relied for salva- 
tion upon their adhesion to what 
was written, how could they look 
to Christ for that life which they 
supposed they had already? Yet 
these very Scriptures, which 
hindered them while treated as 
a sort of charm, were indeed 
most precious, being not only wit- 
nesses, but such official and 
divinely appointed witnesses that 
we read within six verses, ‘I 
receive not the testimony of man 


... these are they which testify 


24 AIDS TO BELIEF 


of Me’ (34-39). Thus we under- 
stand the passage, and see what 
the first clause really means— 
‘Search the Scriptures—it is idle 
superstition to be content with 
holding them: they make no 
profession themselves to save 
your soul: they testify of Me; if 
you would attend to them you 
would learn to find in Me that 
eternal life which you foolishly 
conceive to be inherent in them.’ 
Therefore this great utterance 
offers a most convenient standing- 
place from which to survey the 
relation between Holy Scripture 
and our faith. It warns us that 
_the Scriptures, misused, may be- 
come a formidable hindrance to 
the soul. And it tells us that 
they have a true function, highly 


ng ty, pat PL eee la all 


THE BIBLE AND THE FAITH 25 


evidential, and yet much more 
than evidential; they are they 
which testify of Jesus. Next 
Sunday night I hope to touch on 
the difficulties (so much talked 
of in our time) which have been 
raised by what is called the 
Higher Criticism. Do not ima- 
gine that I ignore this question 
when I put it on one side for 
the present, and simply appeal 
to them in the meantime to bear 
their testimony to Jesus, a testi- 
mony triumphant and conclusive. 
We must pause, however, to re- 
mind the sceptic that for him 
their witness, though it is over- 
whelming, has nothing to do with 
any theory of inspiration. That 
is a matter which does not 


concern him at all, and he is no 


26 AIDS TO BELIEF 


more fit to discuss it than a 
drowning man, struggling not to 
sink, is fit to judge of the air- 
tight compartments of the life- 
boat which throws a rope to him. 
What concerns him is whether 
she can float. And what con- 
cerns the sceptic, as yet, is not 
whether inspiration is verbal or 
plenary, nor whether inspiration 
exists at all; it is simply whether 
the writers were truthful enough 
to convince him that Jesus rose 
from the grave. For, certainly, 
if this much be true—if Christ 
was indeed declared to be the 
Son of God with power by the 
resurrection from among the dead 
—then I am bound to be a Chris- 
tian, apart from any theory of 


how the evangelists wrote. They 


oi thane 


THE BIBLE AND THE FAITH 27 


might conceivably have written 
just as Tacitus and Josephus 
wrote of the burning of Rome 
and Jerusalem, events which 
none doubt, although no person 
conceives these writers to have 
been inspired, or even accurate 
in all details. I am not making 
little of the discussion of these 
subjects in the Church — they 
deeply concern theology,—but I 
assert that no possible opinion 
about inspiration justifies un- 
belief; neither is the unbeliever 
in a position to judge of them 
calmly and without prejudice. 
As a fact, it is understood that 
at least one great student and 
man of letters in our day, a lay- 
man with the very loosest views 


of inspiration, does nevertheless 
é Cc 


28 AIDS TO BELIEF 


avow that the resurrection of 
Christ is the best-attested fact 
in all history. And it is so. I 
wish that people who are scep- 
tical about the Four Gospels 
would take the trouble to find 
out how much older and more 
numerous are the copies of these 
than of the ancient classics; how 
soon and how often they were 
translated into other tongues; 
how early are the quotations and 
allusions to them in other books ; 
with what veneration they were 
treated from the beginning. 

I suppose that nearly a cen- 
tury has passed since a half-crazy 
man of letters printed a really in- 
genious book to show that none 
of the classical writers ever lived; 


that whole literature was a hoax, 


THE BIBLE AND THE FAITH 29 


or rather it was an ingenious 
mental exercise of the monks 
in the monasteries of the Middle 
Ages. They wrote the classics 
for us. The poor man was 
laughed at; yet the evidence 
for the genuineness of these 
books is a drop in the bucket 
compared with the evidence for 
ours, which I boldly assert that 
no one would ever have doubted 
if they were not so _ exact- 
ing, if they did not require the 
submission alike of the intellect 
to their doctrine and of the life 
to their precepts. 

There is more to say, and, per- 
haps, to some here it may be 
more surprising. In my college 
days, every sceptical writer in- 


sisted on putting St. John’s 


30 AIDS TO BELIEF 


Gospel at least well into the 
second century; and they avowed 
that if Jesus were simply a great 
teacher, then the belief in His 
Divinity, according to St. John, 
could not have sprung up sooner. 
Such were the controversies in 
which I was trained. But all 
this is over now. The greatest 
New Testament scholar of liberal 
views in Germany, the illustrious 
Harnach, after a life of diligent 
study, has published his avowal 
that what he calls ‘the reaction,’ 
that is, the reaction against loose 
views, has triumphed, and that 
all the greater books of the 
New Testament (all, I think, 
except the Pastoral Epistles and 
Second Peter) are proved be- 
yond doubt to belong to the 


THE BIBLE AND THE FAITH 3! 


first age, the period to which the 
Church assigns them. Now, see 
what this means. It means that 
neither the belief in miracles, 
nor the adoration of a carpenter 
as God (knowing Him to be a 
carpenter), nor the notion that 
His body and blood were things 
to be given to others, things to 
eat and drink in some spiritual 
way, none of these were after- 
thoughts: they did not grow up 
slowly as legends have gathered 
about all great men, from Alex- 
ander to Napoleon, but all of 
them utterly unlike ours. No; 
they were part and parcel from 
the first of the convictions of 
the generation who had seen 
Christ. But this is enough; it 


is decisive; the battle of scep- 


32 AIDS TO BELIEF 


ticism is lost before a word has 
been said about inspiration. And 
yet I am so unhappy as to feel 
quite sure that the same silly 
people who were frightened into 
hysterics by the theology of 
‘Robert Elsmere, long after 
every competent judge of all 
schools knew that Dr. Light- 
foot and others had blown such 
theories into space—the same 
foolish women of both sexes 
will be just as much alarmed 


the next time that a fashion- 


able novelist serves up second- . 


hand infidelity to spice a romance. 
There are always people to be- 
lieve in ghosts. 

As in the time of Our Lord, 
so now, much harm is done, 


and many doubts are excited, 


I me eet £5 


FRR a Oe Ne PC NE EN Ae Ne ye 


hae s 
we? Ss 


BOA ae A Nee? a Nae 


THE BIBLE AND THE FAITH 33 


by notions of inspiration which 
have no authority whatever in 
Scripture itself. I can remem- 
ber the immense sale of a book 
which insisted that the Bible 
was not only the word, but the 
very words, of God. But if you 
observe closely, you will find 
that the Scripture itself is quite 
free from any such assertion, It 
says that the word of the Lord 
came to Isaiah, but it speaks also 
of the word which Isaiah saw— 
his message flaming before his in- 
ward eye. To Jeremiah it was 
a fire in his bones, forcing him 
to speak ; but always the speaker 
is human, the message divine, 
and the tone of the human 
voice, which in writing we call 


the ‘style, is not the same in 


34 AIDS TO BELIEF 


any two. And so we are dis- 
tinctly told that ‘holy men of 
old spake’—they spake—‘as 
they were moved by the Holy 
Ghost. And in the most ex- 
press definition given us any- 
where of the work of inspiration, 
what we read is this —‘ Every 
Scripture inspired of God is also 
profitable for teaching, for re- 
proof, for correction, for instruc- 
tion which is in righteousness, 
that the man of God may be 
complete, furnished completely, 
unto every good work. And 
I will say here that whoever 
accepts Scripture in this sense, 
as given by God, to be his 
moral and religious guide and 
teacher, his theory of inspiration 


may be undefined and vague, 


THE BIBLE AND THE FAITH 35 


but it suffices, not, perhaps, for 
theological science, but for sal- 
vation. Let none be disquieted 
or self-reproachful who listens 
with the ear of a disciple to 
the Bible witnessing of Jesus. 
And what a marvellous testi- 
mony it bears! The most spiri- 
tual creed anywhere outside the 
Church of Christ is Buddhism, 
but the first page of the Bible 
supplies what all Buddhism can- 
not give: it meets the deepest 
craving of our nature with the 
twofold proclamation of human 
sin and of a human suffering Re- 
deemer. Buddhism says: ‘Sup- 
press your appetites, for all that 
exists is a delusion.’ The Bible 
says: ‘ All flesh is corrupt before 
the Lord.’ The Buddha says: 


36 AIDS TO BELIEF 


‘I have saved myself; ye must 
save yourselves.’ Scripture says 
that the seed of the woman, 
with his own heel bruised, shall 
crush the head of our tempter. 
To Abraham there is promised 
a descendant who shall bless the 
whole world. No sooner is the 
law given than it becomes plain 
that He is to set the law aside; 
for this chief of a religion is not 
to belong to the priestly but the 
Royal tribe, and yet He is to bea 
Priest sitting upon a throne, and 
even, while then sitting, not stand- 
ing, at God’s right hand, a priest 
after the order of a Canaanite. 
Is there anywhere else, I wonder, 
a religion which looks forward 
eagerly to the greatest of its 


sons trampling thus on all that 


y= 


THE BIBLE AND THE FAITH 37 


it holds sacred? Everywhere 
else in the Old Testament the 
righteous is rewarded—he is to 
be like a tree planted beside a 
river: goodness and mercy shall 
follow him all his days: the 
Lord will make fat his bones: 
his enemies shall come against 
him one way and flee from him 
seven ways: light is sown for 
the righteous and joyful glad- 
ness for the true-hearted. But 
there is one Righteous Man 
(and always one), whose doom 
is shown in the Twenty-second 
Psalm and the Fifty-third of 
Isaiah, whom it pleases the 
Lord to bruise; who is Himself 
offered, a human sacrifice, to 
God. ‘Sin,’ says Dr. Driver, 


‘is regarded as an invasion of 


38 AIDS TO BELIEF 


God’s honour, and the satisfac- 
tion paid for it is the innocent 
life of His Righteous Servant.’ 
‘A curious satisfaction, is it not? 
And who can fathom the per- 
plexity of a devout Jew, pon- 
dering the strange notion that 
God is to make of a righteous 
soul an offering for sin? Such is 
the picture. Whence came it? 
How has it come to be ful- 
filled? And His character is 
as unique as His career. All 
the great men of the race are 
types of Him, but none re- 
sembles Him. Isaiah, indeed, 
has drawn a sharp contrast, in 
a passage unhappily cut asunder 
by our division of chapters, be- 
tween Cyrus (the only Gentile 
whom any prophet calls ‘my 


a ee eee 


THE BIBLE AND THE FAITH 39 


—_— 


servant’) and that other, ‘My 


Servant whom I have chosen’ ; 
the one coming upon rulers as 
upon mortar and as a potter 
tramples clay; the other break- 
ing no bruised reed, nor quench- 
ing the flax in which only a 
little smoke is lingering. What 
does it matter to evidence like 
this whether the words were 
written a century earlier or 
later? There they shine, a divine 
paradox divinely fulfilled. For 
none denies that they were 
written while no feet had even 
striven to climb this solitary 
and painful way to a solitary 
and sublime greatness. Jesus 
has done this. And, in the 
light of these complicated and 


profound coincidences, these para- 


40 AIDS TO BELIEF 


doxes reconciled; these intui- 
tions so adverse to Judaism, so 
lovingly cherished in her bosom, 
so magnificently fulfilled, so fruit- 
ful of moral greatness whenever 
in all the centuries and wherever 
in all the ruined world men have 
truly known the Scriptures and 
the power of God,—Oh, it is in 
the light of these that I bid you 
hear again the Saviour’s words 
and judge whether they are not 
watranted: ‘Search the Scrip- 
tures ... they are they which 
testify of Me.’ 


Il! 


THE HIGHER CRITICISM 
AND THE FAITH 


‘Prove all things: hold fast that which is 
good.’—1 THESS, v. 21. 
I HOPE that the hearers of my 
last argument observed that at 
least it was a broad one. How- 
ever instructive and edifying to 
Christians the predictions of 
minute details may be, the 
sceptic has always a chance to 
throw doubt upon their actual 
fulfilment. In the nature of 
things it is difficult to put 
beyond all dispute that not a 


bone was broken of a sufferer 
‘ 41 


42 AIDS TO BELIEF 


nearly two thousand years ago. 
But there are other facts beyond 
evasion. No one can deny that 
the Old Testament came to 
Jesus with a challenge in its 
hand, most complicated and 
intricate—a challenge to main- 
tain and enlarge all its religious 
teaching, and yet to abolish all 
its religious institutions — the 
Temple, the sacrifices, the 
priestly order,—and by so 
doing, by stripping it of so 
much that it reckoned dearest, 
to make its deepest convictions, 
hitherto those of a petty tribe, 
strong enough to renew the 
world. No one can deny that 
it cautioned every aspirant to 
this great task that it would 
please the Lord to bruise him 


THE HIGHER CRITICISM 43 


and put him to grief. No one 
can deny that prophecy described 
a sort of greatness quite unlike © 
any which the world had ever 
seen—that, as I showed you, it 
expressly contrasted Cyrus, com- 
ing upon rulers as upon mortar, 
with that mightier Servant of 
God who should not break a 
bruised reed. It is certain that 
even when this type of great- 
ness was described no person 
strove to attain to it, and the 
Maccabees, with this prediction 
in their hands, were quite as 
ready to trample rulers like 
clay as any of the former leaders 
of Israel. In all the history 
of the world one human being 
only has taken rank among the 


supreme leaders of the race 
D 


A4 AIDS TO BELIEF 


upon such lines as these. This 
was foretold, and this has come 
to pass. 

Now, I was very careful 
to urge upon you that this 
convincing evidence depends 
upon no theory of  inspira- 
tion whatever, and that, like 
all the Christian evidences, it 
assumes nothing more than the 
substantial truth of the story 
of our Lord, and the previous 
existence of the prophetic writ- 
ings. I laid stress upon this, 
because people cannot judge of 
- such matters, of Old Testament 
difficulties, of the higher criticism 
concerning which I am now to 
speak to you—they cannot judge 
of them reasonably unless they 
can judge calmly. If I think 


THE HIGHER CRITICISM 45 


that all is lost, that my hopes 
for eternity are gravely com- 
promised, unless Moses wrote 
the account of his own death 
in Deuteronomy, I shall be 
tempted to make my reason 
blind, and endeavour at least 
to believe that I believe that 
it is believable that he might 
possibly have written this. But 
if I feel confident that provided 
I believe on the Lord Jesus 
Christ I shall be saved, then I 
shall retain my senses; then I 
shall remember that the Bible 
itself never really asserts that 
Moses wrote the Pentateuch at 
all, but only that he sang a cer- 
tain song in it, and that, however 
interesting and even important 


such discussions may be, the 


46 AIDS TO BELIEF 


ordinary Christian need not 
agitate himself at all about a 
question of scholarship, which 
only concerns scholars! I say 
it is a question for scholars; 
yet I have undertaken, with 
much reluctance I confess, to 
say something about the higher 
criticism ; because men’s minds 
are so unsettled, such bold asser- 
tions are made in the penny 
papers and sixpenny magazines, 
that the Christian public requires 
to have some frank words spoken 
to it upon a subject which cannot 
really be popularised. I cannot 
speak fully in a sermon, even 
if I were qualified to do so, 
but at least I shall speak quite 
frankly. What then does the 


© 3 See Note A, p. 129. 


THE HIGHER CRITICISM 47 


higher criticism mean? You 
may be surprised to hear that it 
is a thing absolutely harmless in 
itself, which has done great ser- 
vices to the Church, and will yet 
do more, and perhaps greater. 
Suppose then that one who 
had never seen the Epistle to 
the Hebrews were to come upon 
that noble book. He would 
examine the meaning of many 
expressions and allusions, the 
difference between some quota- 
_tions and the exact words of the 
Old Testament—a hundred such 
questions would occur to any 
intelligent student, and _ this 
would be criticism, textual and 
other criticism. But when he 
came thus at the meaning and 


force of the words, higher 


48 AIDS TO BELIEF 


questions, the higher criticism, 
might well begin—he would 
wonder who the writer was, and 
when he wrote. He _ would 
notice some of St. Paul’s habitual 
words and arguments, but also 
some very unlike his—a_ vast 
number of words that he has 
never used, and some that he 
used in a slightly different sense. 
He would notice that, while 
Paul earnestly protests that he 
received not his doctrine from 
men, this writer says, ‘They 
delivered them unto us who 
from the beginning were eye- 
witnesses. He would notice 
that his Greek is such as writers 
used in the great school of 
Alexandria, and that his elo- 


quence, less fiery than the 


THE HIGHER CRITICISM 49 


eee ee 


Apostle’s, is much more 
balanced and artistic, so that 
—I take an extreme example 
—while St. Paul says, ‘ Christ 
sitteth at the right hand of 
God, he says, ‘He for ever 
sat down on the right hand of 
the throne of the Majesty in 
the heavens. He would now, 
like many of the greatest 
Fathers, and all the reformers 
and the best modern scholars, 
feel sure that the writer was 
not Paul himself, but some one 
who had drunk deep into his 
spirit. Then he would ask, 
When was it written? and would 
have no trouble in answering 
that it was among the earliest 
of the New Testament books, 
because it tells us that the old 


50 AIDS TO BELIEF 


system was ‘ready to vanish 
away, which implies that it 
was not yet gone, and also that 
there were still ‘priests who offer 
sacrifices according to the law.’ 
And thus we have another and 
powerful witness to the creed of 
the Church, writing within forty 
years of the Resurrection, and 
quoting witnesses yet earlier 
than himself. This is the higher 
criticism. I told you already 
that Harnach, the greatest 
liberal critic of our day in 
Germany, avows that the re- 
action (which means the reaction 
against unbelieving notions about 
the date of the New Testament) 
has completely triumphed. Now 
this is constantly spoken of as 


a victory over the higher criti- 


THE HIGHER CRITICISM 51 


———————— al 


cism. But it is not so. It is 
a victory in the field of the 
higher criticism, gained by ortho- 
dox critics, Lightfoot, Westcott, 
and our own Dr. Salmon, over 
the unbelieving critics. And it 
has not only beaten off the 
attack: in doing so it has taught 
us to think far better and more 
wisely about the writers and 
their work; to observe and 
value the differences between the 
four Evangelists, the methodical — 
man of business, and the friend 
of the fiery Peter, and the 
comrade of the Apostle of the 
Gentiles, and him who leaned 
his honoured head upon the 
breast of our Lord Jesus. I say 
that we are not exactly where 


the attack found us, but we are 


52. ~~ AIDS TO BELIEF 


far better off—the inundation of 
the Nile has gone down, and 
the fields are fertilised. Why 
then should we, who have seen 
this great victory won, be so 
hysterical in our alarm because 
a battle is still raging over the 
Old Testament, where the issues 
are far less vital, where nothing 
can disturb the mighty evidence 
which I have shown you, the 
progressive education through 
centuries of a nation and a 
religion for a future which they 
utterly failed to apprehend? In 
the Old Testament, as in the New, 
the struggle has already taught us 
much. I suspect that we used 
to think of the authors, if we 
thought of them at all, as caught 


into a sort of frenzy, and writing 


THE HIGHER CRITICISM 53 


their fine utterances at a white 
heat, as the old poets pretended 
that they sang. But surely the dis- 
covery that traditions, documents, 
pedigrees, and even legal forms 
are copied into the very earliest 
books, adds weight, and gives a 
lively interest to them. Listen, 
for instance, to Abraham pur- 
chasing a place of burial; hear — 
the words of the grave and 
dignified mourner, and then of 
the greedy sellers, offering the 
field as a_ gift, but making 
mention of three times the true 
value of the property, and then 
observe how the narrative pro- 
ceeds—‘ So the field of Ephron, 
which was in Machpelah, which 
was before Mamre, the field, and 


the cave which was therein, and 


54 AIDS TO BELIEF 


all the trees which were in the 
field, which were in all the border 
thereof round about, were made 
sure unto Abraham.’ And every 
teachable soul should be inter- 
ested, not offended, by learning 
that before footnotes were in- 
vented, the- editor put’ -his 
remarks into the text, so that 
we have mention of the later 
names of places, and even of 
kings in Israel; while the 
death of Moses comes in just 
as the autobiography of a certain 
medizval Italian general goes 
on to tell about his death and 
burial, in no way divided from 
his own writing; and there has 
come down to us in the original 
law-book many a later law. It 


was impossible that a code 


THE HIGHER CRITICISM 55 


written in the desert should not 
have required additions and 
changes, and the two, existing 
side by side, are evidence that 
no such wholesale revision was 
ever made as_ would have 
smoothed the first away. I for 
one see nothing to alarm us 
in the thought that we have 
more than one writer in our 
Book of Isaiah. This only adds 
another to the profoundest voices 
and clearest visions of the ancient 
time. Nor can any evidence of 
style prove anything, unless it 
was some later poet seeking to 
exhibit the vanity of human 
glory, who used the great name 
of Solomon to dramatise the 
bitter disappointment, the ex- 


hausted animalism and intellec- 


56 | AIDS TO BELIEF 


tualism from which he _ turns, 
almost broken-hearted, to the 
simple ways of duty. It is 
criticism which has set this 
magnificent creation in a blaze 
of artistic and ethical glory, and 
has for ever silenced the bitter 
scoff, that we have canonised, 
and adopted as our own, the 
sour complaints of some jaded 
voluptuary. 

But, of course, this critical 
method has been seized by un- 
belief. A daring attempt is 
being made to prove that the 
old histories were not only 
written many centuries after the 
events which they relate, and 
touched up, again and again, 
afterward, but are unhistorical 


in their accounts of the religion, 


THE HIGHER CRITICISM 57 


and the general circumstances of 
their forefathers; and in many 
cases this is done with the 
avowed intention of getting rid 
of all that is miraculous in them. 
It is impossible to go into the 
details of such a controversy 
here ; but for myself, I am con- 
vinced that already the seams are 
opening in the timbers of these 
wilder theories, and the water 
is rushing in. It used to be 
argued that writing was unknown 
to the Jews of the time of 
Moses: now that contention is 
quite given up. It is impossible 
to make what we know about 
the Psalms square with the 
demands of such criticism, and 
the earliest Prophets who wrote 


down their predictions imply 


58 AIDS TO BELIEF 


a state of things very far from 
harmonising with its theories. 
But let us have one specimen 
of their work. The twin giants 
of the destructive criticism are 
Wellhausen and Kuenen. Now, 
Wellhausen labours with great 
earnestness to prove that the 
early sacrifices were all festive— 
simply a sharing of their banquet 
with the kindly God of the tribe 
—and the darker notion of pro- 
pitiation only came with what is 
called the priestly code. He 
writes: ‘An underlying reference 
to sacrifice for sin, speaking 
generally, was entirely absent. 
The ancient sacrifices were 
wholly of a joyous nature—a 
merry-making before Jehovah’ 
(History of Israel, p. 81). 


THE HIGHER CRITICISM 59 


© 1 confess that‘ I find this 
theory the odder because he 
tells us that the human sacri- 
fices of Abraham and Jephthah 
‘belonged to the older practice’ 
(p. 69); but it is a matter which 
he lays great stress upon, and 
which he proves quite clearly, 
if you only allow him to blot 
out, as an interpolation, every 
verse or half-line which looks 
the other way. With this liberty, 
I suppose we could all prove 
anything. And Kuenen proves 
just the reverse: ‘By various 
paths we arrive at one and the 
same conclusion: originally ... 
Javeh was conceived by those 
who worshipped Him to be 
a Severe Being inaccessible to 


mankind, whom it was _ neces- 
E 


60 . AIDS TO BELIEF 


sary to propitiate with sacri- 
fices, and even with human 
sacrifices’ (Relig. of Israel, 1. 
249). 

These diverse conclusions 
throw a curious light upon the 
processes which lead equally to 
both. And I advise you, when 
you wish to test the qualifications 
of some flippant talker about the 
modern school and its assured 
results, to ask whether he agrees 
with Wellhausen or Kuenen 
about the origin of sacrifices. 
Give him no further clue, and 
watch the result. 

Something I would fain have 
added about the ease—as great 
or greater—with which a similar 
process would break up the 


English literature of our own 


THE HIGHER CRITICISM OI 


time: But I must be content 


with what has been said, and 


with this for a moral—that in 


Yin Wek erent nema neem 


calmness and quietness is our | 


security, not railing at science | 


or its methods; not imagining 
that all is lost when some old 
opinion changes form, like the 
teil tree or the oak, whose 
strength is in them when they 


cast their leaves ; not supposing 


that all which asserts itself 


loudly must be true; not doubt- 


ing but that all genuine truth is | 


our inheritance, and, above all, 


remembering that no truth can 
smite another in the face, and > 
that the veriest truth of God is_ 
that mighty revelation of One 


coming, who now has, indeed, 


a * Aj : — oe 
\ tr , A 4S 
mat EE ¥¥1i AR Aas F ~ 
. % 2 { i} 
i? R - a en ‘ee, - 
Spr Vas ldesis;, f 
Be es PELE AR Db OF Ses ® 


62:\./SAIDS. TOV BELIEF 


come—a revelation which took 

shape and colour through con- 

federate ages, and was consum- 

mated in the person of Our - 
Lord. 


IV 


THE AGES BEFORE CHRIST 


‘From everlasting to everlasting Thou art 
God.’—PSALM xc, 2. 
WE are now to consider the evi- 
dence borne to our faith by the 
ages before Christ. Stress has 
been already laid upon one 
branch of this subject, because 
no argument can be more 
evident to any one who takes 
the trouble to think, or larger in 
scale, or more convincing, than 
the correspondence between what 
even scepticism will not refuse 
to call the mystic anticipations 


of former ages and what Our 
68 


64 .. AIDS TO BELIEF 


Lord achieved. If any one 
objects that these may have 
fulfilled themselves by suggest- 
ing and shaping His career, the 
answer is plain: they suggested 
it to no one else; the deepest 
students of the Old Testament 
rejected Him with scorn, and 
demanded a _ quite different 
Messiah; and, moreover, the 
course He took, in the nature 
of things, could not have 
attracted the ambition or in- 
flamed the imagination of any 
one, for He was despised and 
rejected of men, a Man of 
sorrows and acquainted with 
grief. 

But there is more to say about 
the relation between our creed 


and the older time. I can 


THE AGES BEFORE CHRIST 65 


imagine that as this argument 
was pressed some acute minds 
in this congregation were silently 
rejoining, ‘What about the 
oldest history of all, whose 
records only science can inter- 
pret? What about creation in 
six days? And what about 
the development of species?’ 
Here I admit at once that some 
explanation is required, and 
much candour (quite as much 
from me who speak as from you 
who listen), and that grave and 
real offence has been caused by 
hasty advocates of the faith, 
resolved to see nothing in the 
case except what suits their 
own brief. I admit that no 
reader of the Bible, before geo- 
logy, had seen in the first 


66 AIDS TO BELIEF 


chapter of Genesis what we see 
now, just as no gazer upon the 
rocks had seen it there. Theo- 
logy is a human science, exactly 
as geology is, except that the 
material it works upon is revela- 
tion, while geology works upon the 
physical universe; and I put it 
to your common-sense, which of 
the two ought to have been the 
first to cease making mistakes 
in a question of physics? But 
yet I hasten to add that there 
was conclusive evidence in Scrip- 
ture itself, just as there was in 
the rocks, though unobserved in 
both, that the week of creation 
was not a literal week, and con- 
sequently the narrative was not 
to be read as one reads a cove- 


nant or an indenture. People 


THE AGES BEFORE CHRIST 67 


speak of the six days, but what 
about the Seventh Day? The 
Book of Psalms declared plainly 
that the Sabbath of God had not 
yet ended ; that if the Jews had 
been faithful they should have 
entered not merely into rest, but 
into ‘My rest.’ The Epistle to 
the Hebrews laid stress upon 
this curious point: ‘He sware 
in His wrath, if they shall enter 
into My rest, although the works 
were finished from the founda- 
tion of the world.” ‘He hath 
said of the seventh day on this 
wise, God rested on the seventh 
day from all His works,’ and in 
this place again, ‘They shall not 
enter into My rest.’ And it 
draws the really irresistible con- 
clusion that this Sabbath still 


68 AIDS TO BELIEF 


endures, and we may share 
itt ©. there remaineth, therefore, 
Sabbath-keeping for the people 
of God.” More emphatic and 
remarkable still is our Lord’s 
own argument, when reproached 
with Sabbath-breaking : — ‘My 
Father worketh until now, and I 
work. That is to say, though 
God rests from creation, His 
work of providence and kind- 
ness goes forward, and it entitles 
Me to heal this impotent man 
on My seventh day. It cannot 
mean anything else. For what 
sort of answer would it have 
been to say:—‘My Father 
worketh when it is not His 
Sabbath, and therefore I work 
although it is Mine’? But it 


follows that the whole week is 


THE AGES BEFORE CHRIST 69 


ee 


non-literal, for who ever heard of 
a week of which six days were 
twenty-four hours each, and the 
seventh a few thousand years? 

I have shown you already\ 
that the purpose for which | 
Scripture was _ inspired was 
religious, and it would have 
been ridiculous as well as im+ 
possible to teach modern ge0-| 
logy to ancient Israel. What, 
was possible was to claim the 
whole universe, sun, moon, and 
stars, as well as earth, and all the 
races of mankind, for God, and 
thereby to shut out for ever the 
notion of a tribal god, fighting 
for his own adorers against the 
rival deities of other races, and 
the notion of various gods for 


various functions—one for the 


| 


70 ~~ +AIDS TO BELIEF 


sky, another for the waters, and 
es another for the land. If, 
_ | now, you ask what permanent 
* teaching for mankind the division 


pot creation into six days was 


pa really intended to convey, I think 
: myself that there is a ready 
\ answer, and the clue to it is 
{ _the order of the days, in their 
| double column of three days 
leach. For does not all our 
; existence move in a _ threefold 
| habitation and wrap itself in a 
a threefold envelope? The outer- 
! \ most of all that we know is 
i \ light, that vast and luminous 

\ 
\ \ocean in which we and whatever 
lwe may conceive are launched ; 
and within it is a second en- 
velope of water, washing the 


} 
i 
| | 
Hi } ° 
‘shore of every continent, and 
| 


THE AGES BEFORE CHRIST 7! 


ncn 


falling upon us from the rushing 


clouds; and within this again 


the green world which we in- | 


habit. Light, and the twofold 


waters, and the grassy world, | 


—these, in this order, make the 
first three days. 

And the second column enu- 
merates in the same order the 
moving denizens of each of these: 
in the light, the sun, moon, and 
stars: in the waters, the fish and 
birds: on the earth, the beasts 
and men. Behold the six days, 


the creation of all that exists in | 


orderly and logical succession ; \ 


not at a stroke, but at intervals, | 


and rising up to man, who is not 


the first-born (as you might ex- 


pect), but the last to appear on\ / 


N 


the earth which is given him to 


72 AIDS TO BELIEF 


‘subdue. ‘Ah yes,’ one retorts, ‘if 


“© you had found this out before 
‘science prompted you: but why 


\had you to wait for other folk 


‘to discover it all before you be- 
came so wise?’ Because it was 
not our business: because God, 
Who gave religion to tell us of 
Himseif, gave science to explain 
His world. It would have been 
strange indeed if He had para- 
lysed our intellects by prompting 
religion to push science off her 
chair. But I will tell you some- 
thing stranger still: that when- 
ever science has changed her 
own opinion upon matters purely 
scientific—the movement of the 
earth around the sun, the substi- 
tution of gravitation for vortices, 


the origin of species—an outcry 


THE AGES BEFORE CHRIST 73 


has been raised against religion. 
No one attacks science, which 
has actually misled us hither- 
to; but her professors (who, if 
any one, should really do penance 
in a white sheet) invariably raise 
the cry that it is religion which 
has been deceiving folk, that 
religion is untrustworthy, and 
this fine science of theirs, which, 
you observe, has just turned this 
prodigious somersault, is the one 
thing stable in a world of change. 
For science, and even for the 
teachers of science, I have a 
supreme respect, but this is in 
spite of their ugly habit of ston- 
ing the Pentateuch as often as 
they find that their own physio- 
logy was a romance or their 


astronomy a fond thing vainly 


p 


SSNS SS 


% 


2 


veld LU 


iW 


ae 
all 


74 AIDS TO BELIEF 


imagined. I repeat that physi- 
ology, astronomy, geology belong 


to science. 


4»~And now, what is to be said 


of Darwinism? For at least a 


century and a half every great 
naturalist has believed in some 
form of natural development, 
and every competent theologian 
has observed that whereas the 
heavens and the earth are said 
to have been created, the animals 
are all said to have been made, 
and man explicitly of pre-exist- 
ing material—whether vitalised 
or not is not so much as hinted. 
People speak of the decline of 
Darwinism as if it were in some 
way a relief to theology. But, 
in the first place, it does not 


concern us in the least, as 


THE AGES BEFORE CHRIST 75 


we have already seen; and in 
the next place, the so-called 
decline of Darwinism really 
means no more than this, that 
people have ceased to think 
of it as explaining everything, 
and now reckon it one force 
among many, yet a real force, 
in the upward movement of life 
to sensation, self-consciousness, 
and reason. But there is more to 
say. This upward movement is 
drilled and disciplined: it is not 
a scramble but a plan worked 
out. There are hints in the 
lower creature (useless, and even 
cumbersome, as I cannot but 
think, sometimes, to himself) of 
the greater yet to come, and 
even the writers who deny the 


designer fail utterly to express 
F 


70 AIDS TO BELIEF 


the process without using the 
language of design. This is 
notorious. And when we come 
up to man there is one question 
which no materialistic theory can 


answer. The difference between 


._ him and the nearest of the mam- 
* malia is measured by steam- 


“ engines and printing presses, by 


telescopes, cathedrals, epic poems, 
oratorios, and litanies, by the 
means of grace and the hope of 
glory. Is all this difference ex- 
plained by differences in his 
body? Then you have certainly 
many missing links to find be- 
fore you can claim to have 
bridged the wide and unfathom- 
able gulf which severs him from 
the ape, cracking nuts in his tree. 


If it is not in his body, what 


THE AGES BEFORE CHRIST 77 


better name have you found for 
it than ours, who shall still call 
it his soul, this immaterial part 
of him which reaches up its 
hands to God and cries into 
immensity, Our Father? 

More yet. This process of a 
slow evolution, weeding out the 
unfit, preparing in lower forms 
the germs of higher glories— 
this is the very history of the 
Christian faith, rising from the 
Jewish and the patriarchal. The 
ancient philosopher adored a re- 
mote and solitary being, ignorant 
of emotion and of suffering. The 
Christian kneels to One who 
desires, plans, and is patient; 
thwarted in details but never in 
the issue of His wondrous pro- 


cess, not leaping at once to His 


78 AIDS TO BELIEF 


mark as if the interval between 
starting-place and goal insulted 
Him; but loving the process 
equally with the result, the blade 
and the ear and the full corn 
in the ear.. The Arian ‘and 
Socinian heresies have their root 
in impatience at this strange 
spectacle of a God who is Him- 
self immersed in the struggle 
and burden of His universe. 
And our fathers may well have 
been perplexed by the strange 
contrast between the prompt and 
direct action of God in creation 
and the slow, long-suffering pro- 
cess by which, in the fulness of 
time, He bringeth the First-Be- 
gotten into the world. But now 
the contrast is an analogy. For 


us who think of natural life, at 


THE AGES BEFORE CHRIST 79 


first rudimentary, always vexed 
and buffeted by competition of 
the higher and lower type, but 
elevated by the very struggle to 
exist, and led slowly upward by 
the unseen hand of God—for us 
nature is a record in the same 
handwriting which has traced the 
history of the Church. Abraham 
had faith to emigrate, to believe 
that he should have a son, and 
to lay Isaac on the altar. But 
when St. Paul dissects out this 
rudimentary faith, he finds in it 
the germ of everything, exactly 
as the questioner of nature finds 
in certain ascidian larve the 
hint and promise of that spinal 
column which holds man erect, 
with eyes looking out into the 


infinite. 


80 + AIDS TO BELIEF 


Will any one deny that the 
struggle to exist has been as 
sharp an instrument of God to 
shape the Church as to mould the 
world around? From the furnace 
of Egypt, Moses and his law; 
from the defeat and ruin of Saul, 
David; from the invasions of 
Assyria, Isaiah ; in the hour of 
soverthrow and exile, Jeremiah; 
in the captivity, Ezekiel; and 


in all of these, as we already 


saw, some sure premonition of a . 


greatness unlike their own, and 
higher, of which, however, their 
own was a type, a premoni- 
tion, even sometimes a rudiment. 
Lastly, the one development 
which is absolutely certain is the 
development of men into Chris- 


tian men. Come back, then, from 


ky i 
rd a #2 ; 
a » j 
SS ee ee eee 


‘ ‘ é i t . 
= 9 Peta Ie 2 


THE AGES BEFORE CHRIST 81 


DO Ee 


the far-off ages, from peering 
into mists wherein one imagines 
the half of what he sees, come 
back to the Cross of Jesus, and 
confess that you may explain 
much animal mechanism without 
explaining Christ the power of 
God and the wisdom of God. 
‘The effects of our most uniform 
and frequent experiences, Mr. 
Herbert Spencer tells us, ‘have 
been bequeathed, principle and 
interest, to the race’ So be 
it. But the most constant ex- 
perience of all was that suc- 
cess came of strength, cunning, 
adaptability ; that the weak must 
perish; that the fittest must 
survive; that the task not only 
of individuals but of races is to 


succeed, to struggle, to trample, 


82 AIDS TO BELIEF 


to absorb, to grasp, to live. Yet, 
on a sudden, in the worst age in 
the world, when even revealed 
religion is dying of ossification of 
the heart, behold, a simultaneous 
movement spreading from the 
Pharisees of Judea to the fre- 
quenters of gladiatorial shows: 


together they adore an executed 


_ carpenter—they adore Him be- 


cause He accepts agony and a 
bloody sweat, and the cross and 
passion, because He laughs to 
scorn your beautiful doctrines of 
the survival of the fittest, and 
success by strength, cunning, and 
adaptability. The weeding out 
of weak specimens, the natural 
selection of the strongest and 
best nourished, these you vaunt 
as the secret of the upward pro- 


gress of all life, the one lesson 


a 


? , 3 v 
P a = =A. 
gn ee ee AE a 1 8 es 


THE AGES BEFORE CHRIST 83 


which countless ages have graven 
upon the universal conscious- 
ness. And yet the mightiest 
and healthiest races, the most 
certain to survive, are those 
which have best learned the 
quixotic and ruinous precepts 
that bid the weak, the helpless, 
and the diseased be cherished 
with especial tenderness, preach- 
ing self-sacrifice and the taking 
up of a cross. Why, then, if 
Darwinism has really discerned 
the law of natural progress, here 
is the supernatural, visible to all 
men’s eyes. Or else what is 
it? And the greatest of all its 
preachers answers: It is the 
weakness of God stronger than 
men; and the foolishness of God 


wiser than men. 


Vv 


THE AGES SINCE CHRIST 


‘Lo, Iam with you all the days, even unt 
the end of the world.’—-MATT. xxviii. 20, 


WE have argued that the ages 
before Christ foreboded Him ; 
and as modern science reads in 
the lower animals hints and 
prefigurations of loftier forms to 
come, so we found in the Old 
Testament the germs whence 
Christianity unfolded itself. This 
is now an evidence, but clearly 
it was an embarrassment at first ; 
the multitude and variety of 
these premonitions were en- 


tanglements for the feet of the 
84 


——- 


THE AGES SINCE CHRIST 85 


Messiah. Let us look at a few 
of them before we pass. A 
narrow and intolerant religion 
and race shall raise up a Seed 
in whom all the families of the 
earth shall be blessed. A Man 
is to be Jehovah’s fellow, and 
yet a sword shall awake against 
Him. Jehovah Himself shall 
smite the Shepherd and scatter 
His own flock, An all-conquer- 
ing Hero goes to mockery and 
- shame of which even the details 
are given. He is made an offer- 
ing for sin by One who delighteth 
not in burnt offerings. He fails 
so utterly that men hide their 
faces from Him, and He succeeds 
so perfectly that they call Him 
Mighty God and _ Everlasting 
Father. He is the Prince of 


ceiennideaiindiainieean iaseeomnmmmemetl asmepenemens 


86 AIDS TO BELIEF 


Peace, and His arrows are sharp 
in the heart of His enemies. All 
greatness is a type of His; He 
is a Prophet like unto Moses; 
He is called ‘My Servant 
David’; He is* a: Priest after 
the order of him to whom Abra- 
ham paid tithes; and not only 
must all these functions be re- 
conciled, but at the same time 
His originality must be preserved, 
for this august personage must 
not be the pale imitator of any 
one. He must be a voice, not 
an echo, Thus the history of 
the past is at once a snare for 
the impostor, and a convincing 
witness to Him who solves its 
problem. 

And now we come to the 


history of the ages since Christ 


THE AGES SINCE CHRIST 87 


appeared ; and at the very out- 
set I ask, Where are the other | 
religions of the first century ?) 
Those of Egypt and of Persia 
are dead: it is seldom that ae 
lonely student spells out pain- | 
fully the inscription on their \ 
crumbling sepulchres, | 
Where are the bright and | 
romantic superstitions of Greece 
and Rome? They too are dead: 
poetry and art have only em- 
balmed them; and though we 
gaze upon their features, there 
is no voice, none answers when 


_ we speak. 
‘’Tis Greece, but living Greece no more.’ 


And if the religions of the } 
Fast live on, they are bed-ridden / 
and paralysed: they only em- 


88 AIDS TO BELIEF 


phasise by contrast the difference 
between senility and eternal 
youth. 

For the religion of Judea, 


transformed and glorified, lives 


“on. Its temples overtop the 


palaces of our kings, and its 
saints are revered in lands where 
Cesar and Napoleon are un- 
known. We often appeal to the 
evidence for Christ’s resurrection, 
and urge that nothing short of 
absolute certainty could have 
nerved men who hoped for no 
earthly gain to defy sword and 
flame for the joy of proclaiming 
that the Lord is risen. We have 
a right to this appeal. But here 
is a resurrection which none can 
gainsay: the hopes and convic- 


tions of God’s ancient people, 


THE AGES SINCE CHRIST 89 


whatever made Israel dwell alone 
among the nations, all are buried 
in the grave dug for Israel by 
the Roman steel; but the stone 
is rolled away from the door of 
the sepulchre, and the creed has 
emerged, infinitely more beautiful 
and bright, ‘raised a_ spiritual 
body’ in the winged faith of 
Jesus which traverses the world 
to-day. 


Now every day since then has + 


put it to some new test. The | ~2 


deadliest foes, the most astonish- 
ing revolutions, the most terrible 
revolt of her own sons, and 
something still more dangerous, 
that slow and steady change of 
Opinions, that drifting away and 
swamping of old views, tastes, 


methods of judging, arguing, and 


90 AIDS TO BELIEF 


feeling, which make the contrast 
between the ancient and the 
modern world, the new civilisa- 
tion and the old,—all these have 
met her, all have raged against 
her, and all have raged in vain. 
They have come and gone like 
the winds ; they have swung this 
way and that like the tides, but 
she has stood up amid the tem- 
pest and above the foam, a rock 
crowned with a beacon for the 
mariners, and sheltering a haven 
from the blast. Now this per- 
manent force, this many-sidedness 
of conquest, is not given to false- 
hood; it belongs only to what 
is rooted in nature, what is true. 

Look round the world, as it 
was when Jesus came. 


Here is the Jew, formal, un- 


THE AGES SINCE CHRIST 91 


loving, with high but severe 
views of God. Christ melts his 
formalism, kindles his bigotry 
into a most loving ardour, lights 
up his shadowy truths like the 
painting on a lamp-shade when 
the flame within is kindled, and 
sends him to bear the cross to 
the world’s end. And forthwith 
whatever holds aloof, whatever 
insists on being merely Jewish, 
dies. It exists, if you like, still ; 
but it is a fossil. Nias 


And here is the Greek. He = 


has just given the last touch to 


1i7il B® "3 


\ See 
Vs Plea 
tor 


his marvellous language, his keen 
logic, his perfect perception of 
the beautiful. The Christian 
faith makes a shrine for her 
imperishable truths of the per- 


fect language which is understood 
G 


ee ene 
= ae 


ap 


SS 


= —se 
SS ae PEE 


92 AIDS TO BELIEF 


everywhere; takes the edge of 
his logic with which to mould her 
dogmas and to smite her oppo- 
nents down; takes his unparal- 
leled sense of beauty, to confess, 
as fairer than the sons of men, the 
visage which was more marred 
than that of any man. Which 
being done, the Greek intellect 
straightway falls into its dotage. 


ot And here is, lastly, the Roman. 


He has just built up that mighty 
organisation of empire, the most 
terrible and solid specimen ever 
exhibited of disciplined, calm, 
all-conquering brute force. His 
power is everywhere. It has 
stamped out for the moment 
the aggressiveness of small na- 
tional and local prejudice; and 


the Faith employs this catho- 


THE AGES SINCE CHRIST 93 


licity of empire to smooth its 
way from Syria to Greece and 
Rome, to Spain and England. 
His laws are everywhere; and 
she invokes them to shelter her 
great Apostle from the fury of 
his foes, and to protect the truth 
from being crushed in its infancy. 
‘Take heed what thou doest,’ she 
said, ‘for this man is a Roman,’ 
His trade is everywhere, and she 
uses it, as she uses our British 
sails to-day, to waft her Gospel 
from shore to shore. Then she 
publicly desires him to do her 
a further service. Looking this 
giant in the face, she dares him 
before the world to match his 
tremendous resources against her 
gentleness, his mailed fist against 


her open palm. The empire of © 


94 —«AIDS TO BELIEF 
sak Sate pee Renna eR Rd S 


the world accepts the challenge, 
and smites her, who never strikes 


back, again and again and again. 


~ The blows of her buffeting re- 
if sound through the world, but she 


' never totters. From the fires of 


her martyrdom a face of im- 
mortal youth and_ unsullied 
splendour looks out on the 
astonished world ; and after three 
centuries of blood and smoke, 
she quietly grasps the crown of 
her persecutor and sets it upon 
a Christian head. And now the 
work of Rome is over ; and as the 
Temple of Jerusalem crumbled, 
and the organ voice of Greece 
erew thin, so the sword which 
smote the earth with a perpetual 
stroke was first blunted, and then 


snapped across, 


THE AGES SINCE CHRIST 95 


All the powers of earth served 
her, mocked her, and expired. 

And what then? In rushed 
upon the ruining empire the con- 
fused crowds, naked and strong 
and bloody, which had slain each 
other outside in the dark for 
ages. They upset her laws, 
quenched her civilisation, tore 
her empire into fragments. They 
had no soul for painting or 
poetry, sculpture or architecture, 
yet something in this strange 
religion brought them also, awe- 
struck, silent, on their knees be- 
fore the Cross of Jesus. In that 
wild Europe our Christian faith 
is the one guiding star that shone 
over the weltering waters, Jus- 
tice, order, learning, would all 


have perished but for her. To- — 


96 AIDS TO BELIEF 


day there would exist no Homer, 
no Atschylus, no Virgil, no 
Juvenal, I say quite seriously, 
and without exaggeration, that 
we should only know by some 
vague and shapeless legend the 
difference between Jupiter and 
Julius Cesar, but for Christ, and 
because His religion put a bridle 
in the mouth of passions which 
only under her coercion spared 
age or sex or helplessness. Ex- 
plain to us, you who deny Jesus, 
how the same delusion which 
fascinated the fastidious Greek 
and the majestic Roman could 
also mesmerise the Vandal and 
the Goth—how it floated across 
the deluge in which all else of 
beauty or splendour was en- 


culfed. 


THE AGES SINCE CHRIST 97 


ic alle RRS aa a Te 
There came an evil day. The / | cs 

Church had bridled the bar- tH nf 

barians, but success turned her ere 

brain, and pride and idleness 

and fulness of bread ‘made her 

a curse and a burden to those 

who lately blessed her. She 

became an incubus, a dead 

weight, and every free force in 

existence strove to shake her 

off, How did they fare in that 

endeavour? Art cried out on 

her and was bribed; violence 

smote her and was crushed ; 

philosophy accused her and was 

gagged; and Europe reeled 

under a load which she could 

not endure, but from which she 

was powerless to disengage her- 

self. Then was seen the 


majesty of the Faith itself, for 


98 AIDS TO BELIEF 
a few obscure and feeble men, 
returning to the doctrines of the 
Gospel, wrought the deliverance 
which mighty emperors, deep 
thinkers, and the greatest poet of 
_ the middle ages strove to effect 
| in vain, Only Christ could 
_ reform the Church of_ Christ, 
\and He is seen to loose this 
| worst burden from the shoulders 
of every nation that accepts 
} Him; and while the remainder 
sink back into degradation and 
the night, these bask in the sun 
of fortune and of freedom. 
Think how Spain and England 
have changed places. 


Z 
5 é 
gf 


att ,-eee Yet another storm assails her 
J gag : ; 

Ws Atheism lifts up her blatant 
voice and curses her—a_ shriek- 


owl hooting at the sun. For 


THE AGES SINCE CHRIST 99 


the first time since Julian the 
Apostate, a nation solemnly and 
and officially renounces Christ, 
and engraves on the doorway of 
her burial-ground the somewhat 
hazardous assertion, ‘Death is 
an eternal sleep. And what 
follows? Such a delirium as 
in the name of liberty sets up 
a reign of terror, in the name of 
equality installs a despot, and 
in the name of fraternity per- 
petrates the invasion and plunder 
of Europe—a delirium and the 
inevitable reaction; the old 
dynasty, because its tyranny is 
better than a godless freedom; 
the old superstition, because 
even a degenerate Christianity 
is better than a goddess of reason 


half-naked in the streets; and 


TOO; AIDS TO BELIEF 


with these the sword of outraged 


Europe at her throat. And ever 
since the nation which rejected 
Christ, even beautiful and gifted 
France, has been alternately 
frenzied and despairing, trampled 
by usurpers and by mobs, bleed- 
ing from her own sword and her 
foemen’s, until to-day upon any 
theory her officers are forgers, 
and her magistracy is insulted 
in the streets. Is it possible, 
one asks in a sort of terror, that 
fraud or madness reared this 
imperishable fabric? Pagan 
hate, barbaric rage, the old 
selfish civilisation, medizval 
ignorance, revulsion against the 
usurpation of her sons, the denial 
of scholars and raillery of wits, 


all have striven in turn to slay, 


THE AGES SINCE CHRIST IOI 


to dishonour, to ignore her. 
You might as well strive to 
bridle the morning, to arrest 
the tides. | 
Nor has she merely existed 
through the centuries; she has 
been a power utterly unique 
and unparalleled: in the monas- 
tery with Kempis, Savonarola, 
Luther ; in Parliament with Wil- 
berforce, Buxton, and Shaftes- 
bury; in heathendom with a 
hundred missionaries through 
whom the people that sat in 
darkness have seen a_ great 
light; ay, and on the sick- 
bed with tortured men and frail 
women and children, teaching 
them to look steadily into the 
face of the king of terrors, and 


to know him for a beaten foe. 


Le nee a nt te Fg 


/ 

fot 
F | 
1} 


102 AIDS TO BELIEF 


The Apostles found humanity 
like the impotent man of their 
first miracle. Around were the 
glories of hill and valley, within — 
was the awe and sanctity of the 
Temple, but he lay prostrate in 
the porch, and could enjoy neither, 
craving some ignoble gift, with- 
out a hope of vigour and of 
health. The teachers from Gali- 
lee said to mankind, In the name 
of Jesus of Nazareth, arise! and 
immediately its feet and ankle- 
bones received strength. They 
were, as they professed to be, 
not sages but heralds of salva- — 
tion endued with power. They — | 
poured into a new channel the — 


torrent of the ages, whose drops 


|;are the lives of men. Here, then, 


is the witness of history. The 


THE AGES SINCE CHRIST 103 


ages before Christ saw Him, 


j . if 
i Pym 


= 


unknowing of whom they sang./= Bill 
The subsequent ages assailed 
Him and were overthrown, or\ 
neglected Him and were blighted, | 
or kneeled to Him and were | 
_ crowned, 
O Lamb of God, Redeemer of 
the World, truly Thy name is 
above every name! Still, as of 
old, unbelievers do their worst 
upon Thee, Our Master. They 
“expose Thee among thieves; 
the sky blackens, the earth 
shudders; it seems as if the 
Father has forsaken Thee ; they 
boast that Thou art crucified, 
dead, and buried. Only, as of 
old, voices pierce the darkness : 


some penitent mocker cries, 


; 
| 

* 
H 
zy 
} 
* Y 


104 AIDS TO BELIEF 


‘Lord, remember me’; some 
torturer is heard to murmur, 
‘Truly this was the Son of God.’ 
And again, the stone is rolled 
away from the tomb, where they 
sealed Thee down and guarded 
Thee, and by the tomb stand 
forms of supernatural power, 
like lightning in their terror for 
the spearmen, like young men 
in their nearness to the faithful. 
And still, through grey mists 
and shadows (of the morning, 
not of the night!) Thou comest, 
changed, mysterious, and august, 
but speaking with lips immortal 
now the unforgotten names of us — 
who love Thee, and at the word 
we know in Whom we have 
believed, and our faith in Thee 
is the victory which overcometh 


the world. 


Mai 


THE PORTRAYING OF CHRIST 


‘Even if I bear witness of Myself, My wit- 
ness is true, for I know whence I came and 
whither I go, but ye know not whence I came 
or whither I go,’—Jou viii. 14. 

WE have now reached the close 
of these evidential lectures. As 
I said at the outset, they have 
not been a survey of the wide 
field of the Christian evidences, 
but an attempt to place you at 
the proper standing-point whence 
all the evidences should be 
viewed. For if you regard the 
“faith as a wild and all but in- 
credible belief, into which you 


“are being dragooned by hostile 
105 


i 


106° AIDS TO BELIEF 


evidence, we know the proverbial 
folly of attempting to convince 
a man against his will. But if 
you begin by realising the exist- 
ence of a vast and holy pheno- 
menon, unparalleled alike in the 
ages through which it was 
evolved, in its moral altitude, 
in the grasp it lays upon various 
temperaments and _ characters, 
from the Eskimo to the Anglo- 
Saxon, and from the Magdalen 
up to St. John, and in the end- 
less variety of its practical fruits 
—the existence of something, 
high as the heavens above us, 
with equal sublimities of burning 
noon and crimson evening and 
the silvery infinitudes of night, 
and yet dropping the soft rains 
which feed the grasses and bid 


PORTRAYING OF CHRIST 107 


the torrents thunder down the 
gorge—why, then, the sceptical 
attempt to derive all this wonder 
and goodness from Hebrew 
superstitions and the hysterical 
excitement of a few fishermen, 
tax-collectors, and such folk, will 
become as inadequate as the 
notion that the stars were 
lighted by a match. Our text 
is much to the point: the claims 
of the Gospel are evidenced by 
this, that only our Christ ex- 
plains the origin and the ten- 
dencies of Himself and of all 
the world around. Grant Him, 
and life and death and history, 
and this strange religion which 
dominates them all—all are clear. 
Deny Him, and the story of 


Him, and of humanity, and all 
H 


108 AIDS TO BELIEF 


our struggles and aspirations, are 
an insoluble enigma, a meaning- 
less confusion, and 

‘ All the windy ways of men 

Are but dust that rises up 

And is lightly laid again.’ 
If you even doubt Him, you can 
no longer explain the origin or 
the issue of Him or yourselves, 
or anything. 

You must have observed all 
through the varied argument 
how continually the discussion 
led us to the mention of our 
Lord Himself, pressing us for- 
ward from the religion to the 
Man. And now I am to speak 
to you of the manner in which 
the Gospels write about Him, 
Himself. None can sufficiently 


do that. Moreover, I have to 


PORTRAYING OF CHRIST I09 


speak of little things, because 
these are what would most surely 
elude fiction, just as the Egyp- 
tian magicians could manipulate 
serpents, but failed with flies. 
Much that is nearest to all Chris- 
tian hearts is not appropriate to 
an evidential lecture, and I con- 
fess that I recoil from the some- 
what critical method which best 
suits my object. Yet let us take 
up, as if for the first time, the 
four little pamphlets which have 
transformed the world. Here is 
the essence of the faith. Re- 
move them, and the Old Tes- 
tament interests humanity no 
more. Disprove one event which 
they record—the Resurrection— 
and our faith is vain and we are 


yet in our sins. And the re- 


110. AIDS TO BELIEF 


mainder of the New Testament 
is altogether built on these. 
Reading them, we find that three 
are occupied with the Galilean 
ministry, its public teaching, and 
its wonders, and because they 
treat thus of the same matters 
they are called the Synoptic 
Gospels. And the fourth, later 
and deeper, assuming this story 


known, goes on to tell of different 


matters, of the controversies in 


Jerusalem, and the familiar con- 
verse with the chosen twelve, 
which naturally leads to a certain 
difference in style, to deeper 
thoughts, but less methodical and 
regular expression. And a rare 
opportunity is offered by this 
four-fold narrative, and chiefly by 


this difference between the first 


PORTRAYING OF CHRIST III 


three and the last, to compare, 
to cross-examine, and to observe 
whether they describe the same 
character, and the same habit 
of thought and action. It is a 
severe test. The difference is 
unmistakable between Cyrus de- 
scribed by Xenophon and by 
Herodotus, and Socrates by 
Xenophon and by Plato, because 
in each case one writer has 
touched up the simple story, for 
purposes of edification, and to 
slorify the hero. After so many 
centuries we can rip off, like gold 
lace from an officer’s uniform, 
what has been thus added to 
make a fine impression at the 
cost of truth. Surely four Gali- 
leans, of no literary experience 


whatever, will not succeed in 


112 AIDS TO BELIEF 


deceiving us where the Greek 
intellect has failed. If, as every 
sceptic admits, most of the dis- 
courses are genuine, and enough 
of the story to reveal the real 
character of Jesus, how should 
the custom-house officer and the 
fisherman, when they patch up 
the story with all that is miracu- 
lous, and with the claim to be 
God Almighty, succeed in mak- 
ing the same delicate threads 
and filaments of character and 
of manner to run through the 
original fabric and these purple 
patches sewn upon it? He Him- 
self said that if you sew a new 
patch on a garment that has 
shrunken they will pull asunder 
and make a rent. With this in 


mind, we begin to consider what 


PORTRAYING OF CHRIST 113 


effect the four stories have pro- 
duced upon us. 

And at the outset, one ques- 
tion occurs—What was Jesus 
Christ like? We know this more 
or less of all other famous men. 
We know it of Epictetus, Paul, 
Mahomet, Cicero, Of Alexander 
we know the double curve of 
the forehead and the line in the 
middle, the thick curls, the head 
carried somewhat on one side. 
Not only the face of Cesar is 
familiar, but his concealment 
of his baldness, and how folk 
bantered his affected manner of 
scratching his head. The bust 
of Socrates does not require his 
name upon it. But the Fathers 
of the Church have disputed 
whether Christ was physically 


Ii4 AIDS TO BELIEF 


the fairest of mankind or more 
marred in visage than any. And 
the first ages were so anxious to 
know this that forged documents 
have come to us from very early 
days describing His appearance 
and how He wore His hair and 
beard. Strange that all four 
Apostles keep silence. Was it 
that grander truth made them 
indifferent to this, or did some 
guiding Spirit seal their lips? 
Doubtless the same Spirit which 
taught Paul to say, ‘Though we 
have known Christ after the flesh, 
yet henceforth after the flesh 
know we Him no more.’ 

We go on to notice elsewhere, 
in all four, the same persistent 
refusal to answer any question 


of our mere curiosity. What did 


PORTRAYING OF CHRIST I1I5§ 


Jesus write upon the ground, the 
only time we ever hear that He 
wrote atall? When the dead man 
sat up and began to speak, what 
did he say? Or what were the 
experiences of Lazarus in the 
spirit world ? 


‘ Behold a man raised up by Christ ! 
The rest remaineth unrevealed : 
He told it not ; or something sealed 
The lips of that evangelist.’ 


. All this we would very gladly 
know. | 

Stranger still, how comes it 
that we have no account what- 
ever of the actual Resurrection? 
We know what happened im- 
mediately before and after, but 
over the supreme event itself 
hangs a curtain of impenetrable 
awe. 


Again, St. Paul tells us that 


116 AIDS TO BELIEF 


Jesus appeared first to Cephas— 
that is to say, to him first of 
the witnesses whom Paul can cite. 
And so the two disciples return- 
ing from Emmaus were met 
with the glad words, ‘The Lord 
hath risen indeed, and hath 
appeared unto Simon’ Have 
you ever thought how the peni- 
tent sobbed at his Master’s feet, 
and with what a voice and what 
eyes his Lord restored him? 
We may ponder, but we do not 
know. Over that most sacred 
interview there is woven ‘a silver 
veil of tears.’ 

Now, all these are incidents of 


the most telling kind. I think 


® that Tennyson never makes us 


really sympathise with King 
Arthur except in that most lofty 


PORTRAYING OF CHRIST I17 


and pathetic scene where he 
pardons his guilty wife. Yet 
all the four Evangelists have 
deliberately passed by the op- 
portunity of thus revealing the 
heart of Christ to us as He 


forgives Peter. 


Or again, have you noticed: 


how Shakespeare makes us know 
his people? It is almost entirely 
by their soliloquies, for in speak- 
ing to themselves they betray 
to us their deepest thoughts and 
feelings: 


‘Put out the light, and then put out the 
light.’ 

‘To be or not to be, that is the question.’ 

‘Oh, my offence is rank, it smells to heaven.’ 

‘Out, damned spot ! out.’ 

‘ All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten 


this little hand.’ Nh, AeA 


him, put into the lips of Jesus a 


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118 AIDS TO BELIEF 


soliloquy of ninety-eight lines, 
with one heresy and_ several 


absurdities in it. Yet where 


Milton failed the Galileans have 


succeeded without resorting to 
any of the literary methods; 
they neither make Him solilo- 
quise, nor do they describe Him, 


much less dare to gush over Him, 


gi like Macaulay over the asthmatic 


skeleton covering the slow retreat 


of England, and upon whom 


- danger acts like wine; or Carlyle 


over ‘My Oliver, whom you will 
rightly judge only if your own 
soul is ‘beautiful and terrible to 
you, steeped in the eternal depths, 
in the eternal sunbeams.’ And 
yet they have drawn the best 
known and most intensely vital 


character in the world, and so 


PORTRAYING OF CHRIST I19 


vividly that people of all sorts, 
ages, and ranks, barbarians and 
Anglo-Saxons, mill-girls, soldiers, 
philosophers, are guided through 
life and on their death-beds by 
the example of the Carpenter of 
Nazareth. 

Nay, not the Carpenter. For, 
of all that silence which we have 
observed, the most remarkable 
and sustained is concerning our 
Lord’s home life, and all that 
passed before His thirtieth year. 
This, you would think, is what 


we could hope to imitate; yet 


this is what none of the Gospels 


have recorded. They tell how 
He preached, not like us, but 
with authority; how He did 
among us the works that none 


other man did, but they suppress 


120 AIDS TO BELIEF 


exactly that part which appears 
the best suited for our imitation. 
So grandly has the same inspira- 
tion taught them all, that it is not 
the acts of Jesus but the Spirit of 
the Divine Man which is to leadus. 

And now I ask you to notice, 
as a specimen of many which are 
crowded out by lack of time, one 
of those minuter features which 
the clumsy fingers of legend 
would certainly have let slip. 
It will be useful to take your 
Bible and search out many more: 
the power of the eyes with which 
He looked round about upon 
them: the richness and the 
quietude of His allusions to 
nature, far beyond those of any 
other teacher. But we must now 


be content with one. And I 


PORTRAYING OF CHRIST 121 


do not take His kindness, for 
every one grants that. A great 
infidel explains the character of 
His miracles (so unlike Moses 
plaguing Egypt, or Elijah call- 
ing drought upon the nation) by 
saying that His true character 
was so well remembered all the 
while the legend was growing 
up, as to prevent a single harsh 
‘miracle being ascribed to Him. 
Strange that this same character, 
so well remembered, did not pre- 
vent people from believing that 
He, being a man, made Himself 
God. At all events, Tact is a 
smaller matter: Tact would not 
and could not be guarded by 
mere tradition in this jealous 
fashion. Yet it is here. When 


they try to ensnare Him about 


122. AIDS TO BELIEF 


the tribute, He makes them 
answer their own question by 
confessing that their currency 
is Czsar’s. He awakes the 
conscience of the woman of 
Samaria by the subtle word, 
‘Go, call thy husband.’ It is 
only once, only with a rich but 
_ despised publican who dares not 
presume to invite Him, that He 
invites Himself to dine. How 
full are the parables, and among 
them some which the infidel 
rejects because they imply too 
much, of just the same tender 
feeling for human sensibilities: 
the host whose table is neglected ; 
the woman who cannot find her 
money without telling her neigh- 
bours of her joy; the prodigal 


who .composes a longer and 


PORTRAVING OF CHRIST 123 


humbler speech than the love 
of his father lets him finish; 
and the father who is not con- 
tent without calling, from the 
distance to which he has run to 
meet him, to ‘bring hither’ the 
robe and the ring. 

Now, if this same attribute is 
equally seen in the miracles; if, 
as I said, this thread stretches 
equally through these, they can- 
not be a patch sewn on, but a 
part of the very fabric of which 
other portions are admitted to 
be genuine. Men are watching 
whether He will heal upon the 
Sabbath Day; their malicious 
hopes are excited when the man 
is set in the midst ; He exposes 
their pretended care for the 


Sabbath by consulting them, 
I 


124 AIDS TO BELIEF 


without receiving an answer ; and 
then He confounds them by the 
wonderful device of doing no- 
thing: there is no touch, no word 
of apparent healing; He only 
says, Stretch forth thine hand; 
but the miracle is wrought. So, 
when a few women and children 
are mingled with a vast crowd 
of famishing men, He will not 
hazard a rush: the men must sit 
down in companies of fifties, and 
thus at the end they are easily 
reckoned, while the women and 
children go uncounted. When 
the daughter of Jairus is restored, 
He alone reflects that her system, 
now healthy, is long unfed, and 
amid their looks and words of 
amazement He is practical and 


calm; He bade that something 


PORTRAYING OF CHRIST 125 


on 


should be given her toeat. When 
the widow of Nain dares not let 
her yearning heart loose upon the 
weird visitant from another world, 
He delivered him to his mother. 
We have fortunately one oppor- 
tunity of matching the work 
of these despised Galileans, 
in a half-assimilated language, 
against the ripest art of Greece. 
The tenderest of all Greek poets, 
‘our Euripides the human,’ drew 
no fairer picture than the restora- 
tion by Heracles of the wife of 
Admetos from the grave. Yet 
the demi-god spices for himself 
with a little cruelty the tamer 
bliss of his benevolence, telling 
the bereaved husband that the 
longing for a new bridal will 


soon ease his woe, and hand- 


126 AIDS TO BELIEF 
Snes tarot ESAT hs ABR S ee acta 
ling so roughly the wound he 


means to heal, as to wrench the 
cry from the sufferer, ‘Silence! 
what have you said? I would 
not have believed it of you.’ 
This is the Greek counterpart 
to the tears which Jesus wept. 
And when the lost one is re- 
stored, when the mighty art of 
Greece can find no better word 
than the stupid yet highly natural 
boast, ‘Thou wilt say some day 
that the son of Jove is a capital 
guest to entertain,’ then the guest 
of the house of Simon retains 
all his calmness, and heedful of 
the discomfort of the trammelled 
man recalls the bystanders from 
_ wonder to homely duty. ‘Loose 
him and let him go’ This victory 


of the fisherman over Euripides 


PORTRAYING OF CHRIST 127 


is hard to explain, unless you be- 
lieve that he had really watched 
Jesus raising Lazarus. I say the 
figure of Jesus of Nazareth is 
visibly real, and the faith is once 
more, and by another process, 
proved. 

And happily, when we come 
to argue about this three-fold 
problem—the portion which is 
granted by every one, and the 
Jesus of the miracles, and Him 
who claims to be Divine, to judge 
mankind, to know as the Father 
knows—we have one decisive 
test, to which no other figure in 
all history or literature submits. 
It is the test of the intense and 
practical study and endeavour to 
follow Him of the holiest and 


most intelligent of the race. Asx 


128 AIDS TO BELIEF 


them whether they recognise one 
Jesus, Him whom they know and 
love, in all the narrative? Ask 
then whether they experience 
check or perplexity in passing 
from the synoptics to John— 
from the discourse on the hill- 
side to the healing of the leper 
or the raising of the dead. None 
has ever studied any character as 
they have studied Him. They 
know Him well. How should 
you conceal it from them if that 
were another Head which once 
drooped low under a crown of 
thorns, from this which bears 
erect all the diadems of time 


and of eternity ? 


NOTE A—SERMON IIL, p. 46. 


I AM asked to add something concern- 
ing our Lord’s use of the Old Testament. 
And I do so, after much hesitation, 
because of my clear conviction that it 
is possible to overstrain the argument 
from either side, and that a word of 
moderating counsel may be useful to 
the average reader. 

Any one who reverences Christ's © 
teaching must feel that His use of the 
Old Testament authenticates its claim — 
to a divine authority. It is not here | 
that Christian people differ, but only 
when the question of the authorship of 
certain books comes into debate. 

It is urged, upon one side, that the 
most incidental phrase, spoken by Him 
in whatever connection, binds us to the 


uttermost extent of meaning which can 


130 AIDS TO BELIEF 


be imposed upon it, so that the author- 
ship of Daniel and the Pentateuch is 
ruled, because our Lord quoted ‘the 
prophet Daniel,’ and asked, ‘Did not 
Moses give you the law?’ 

Now, it is far more reverential to 
inquire what our Lord’s usage actually 
was, and to accept this, than to argue 
a prioré what it must have been. And 
we find that He actually said, Moses 
therefore gave you circumcision, al- 
though it was not of Moses but of the 
fathers (John vii. 22). Whether the 
qualifying addition was His, or a 
comment of the Evangelist’s, matters 
not at all: the point is that He used, 
where it did not affect His argument, 
the ordinary method of quotation, much 
as we quote Lady Macbeth or Hamlet 
without ruling the question whether 
Shakespeare is the real author of the 
phrase. All that in any way concerned 
His argument was that circumcision 
had the sanction of the law. The rest 
was immaterial, and He no more paused 
to consider it as affecting His language 


NOTE A—SERMON III. 131 


than to consider whether it is the sun 
which rises or the earth which revolves. 

This much, I think, is clear. 

On the other hand, it seems indis- 
putable that our Lord deliberately hung 
an argument upon the Davidical author- 
ship of the 110th Psalm. For David 
could only be proved inferior to the 
Messiah, provided that it was David 
and no other (‘that very David,’ Mark 
xii. 37) who wrote ‘The Lord said unto 
my Lord.’ 

It is not enough to reply that our 
Lord in the days of His senoszs knew 
not all things. This is indeed certain, 
because He asserts it, once explicitly 
and often by implication and gesture. 
But the question is whether He knew 
all that He built His teaching upon, 
whether the Spirit of knowledge and 
wisdom, which was upon Him without 
measure, is consistent with assuming 
for a basis of argument what He did not 
know, what in fact was otherwise. 

To me this is incredible, not because 
error in argument is mendacious, but 


132 AIDS TO BELIEF 


because it is darkened by some shade 
of presumption, the assuming of know- 
ledge which one does not possess, an 
ethical shortcoming inseparable perhaps 
from our fallen conditions, but not there- 
fore to be ascribed to our Deliverer. 

As to the notion of His refuting His 
enemies by an assertion which He only 
affected to believe—‘David himself 
saith’—in order to make sharp His 
argumentum ad hominem, it is enough 
to say that, thanks altogether to His 
teaching and example, there are hun- 
dreds of Christian controversialists to- 
day who would scorn to win a dialectic 
victory on such terms. 

So much at least appears certain, 
that we who revere Christ must accept 
His assurance with regard to the au- 
thority of Old Testament, but that His 
authority does not appear to be pledged 
to the authorship of whole books, merely 
because He used the accustomed method 
of citation. 


NOTE B—SERMON III. 133 


NOTE B—SERMON IIL., p. 61. 


‘A similar process would break up the English , 


literature of our own time.’ } 


to Lord Macaulay, and place yourselves 
in imagination a thousand years hence. 
Lay proper stress upon the fact that 
there are still known to have existed 
two persons named Macaulay: one the 
friend of Wilberforce, a philanthropist, 
keenly interested in the welfare of the 
people; the other a statesman of im- 
perial instincts, whose rhetoric blazes 
with the glory of England, which he 
extols above that of Greece. And 
now open the history. Chapter differs 
utterly from chapter in the subject 
matter, the authorities relied upon, the 
heroes magnified, and, what should 


a 


VE ff 


LA A oF 
tiling. 


TAKE, for example, the history ascribe 4 


134 AIDS TO BELIEF 
SES 9 eae tn a ge 2 


interest higher criticism most of all, in 
the vocabulary. Scores of words might 
easily be catalogued, which occur often 
in one set of chapters, and never in the 
other set. Here are statistics, the con- 
dition of agriculture, trade, and the 
currency ; just and unjust judges, harsh 


and beneficent legislation, Jeffreys, ; 


Somers, Montague, Newton. You turn 
the page, and here is nothing but battle 
and siege, mine, ravelin, counterscarp 
and citadel, charge and rout and orderly 
retreat, intrigue, treason, and pleno- 
potentiaries, Marlborough and Luxem- 
burg, James, Louis, William and the 
Pope. These subjects and vocabularies 
(much more various than those of J., 
E., and P.) alternate in such blocks as 
if two carts had simultaneously shot 
into one heap a load of brick and one 
of stone. Here is a chapter of the 
philanthropist, and here of the some- 
what jingo statesman. But there are 
curiously entangled (like those half 
lines of Q. and R., and the others 
which astonish us) passages from other 


NOTE B—SERMON III. 135 


writers, for I have myself discovered 
phrases identical with the earlier frag- 
mentary work of Mackintosh. These 
I propose to indicate by the initial H, 
for it may be suspected that they came 
to both from Halifax. 

Nothing in the way of authorship 
in the Old Testament is more wildly 
incredible than that it should have 
been the son of Zachary Macaulay, 
himself the admiring friend of the 
leading abolitionist, who wrote the ac- 
count in this history of the abolition 
of slavery. Thus he writes—if any one 
can believe it to be his writing,—and 
there is no account elsewhere of another 
later struggle: ‘Slavery and the evils 
by which slavery is everywhere accom- 
panied were fast disappearing . . . the 
change was brought about neither by 
legislative enactment nor by physical 
force. . . . Moral causes noiselessly 
effaced first the distinction between 
Norman and Saxon, and then the dis- 
tinction between master and _ slave.’ 
This is all, and this, we are asked to 


136 AIDS TO BELIEF 


believe, is the writing of the son of 
an abolitionist, of the friend of Wilber- 
force. 

ee He Or take Wordsworth. Consider the 
“contrast between the soaring Ode on 


the Intimations of Immortality, and 


the abject Ecclesiastical—you observe, 
Ecclesiastical—Sonnets, and then say 


whether there is no significance in the 
tradition that another Wordsworth, a 
bishop, wrote second-rate hymns. More- 
over, there is proof positive that Words- 
| worth’s best work has been tampered 
| with by some downrightly stupid if not 
| malignant hand. His finest sonnet is 
perhaps that which tells us that the lark, 
even when in the sky, is always near 
its nest :— 

‘Type of the wise, who soar but never roam, 

True to the kindred points of heaven and 

home.’ 

But, as we have it, this laudation opens 
with the most unsuitable epithet in 
the language, ‘Ethereal Minstrel, Pil- 
grim !’—A pilgrim which never roams ! 
In another fine sonnet he defends him- 


NOTE B—SERMON III. 137 


self for having entertained fears of 
England, by the plea that his alarm 
at her peril was the result of his affec- 
tion :— 


‘What wonder if a poet now and then 
Feels toward thee like a lover or a child? 


Like a child! that is to say, his were 
filial fears. But then it was impossible by 
that he should have written, 


‘Of those unjilial fears I am ashamed’; 


A 
and it becomes clear that for some an Qn. 
unknown reason his writing has been / / iP 
tampered with. Th My , 

Ponder again the difference between /’,, if Lord ig 
the styles, said to be contemporary, of we a. os 
Carlyle and Ruskin; and observe thatLPr Bi * y 
the phenomenon is not of one writer but Out ye 
of schools, that the disjected Teutonisms Ne pia bel 


BES f 


of Carlyle join hands with Browning’s 
verse, and the finished purity of Ruskin 
with Tennyson’s. 

How incredible is the assertion that 
all these are contemporaries, wielding 
the same language at the same period, 
and under exactly the same influences ! 


138 AIDS TO BELIEF 


If some one would only tabulate their 
grammatical differences, and the differ- 
ences of their vocabulary, the absurdity 
of this pretension would become trans- 
parent. 

And a similar contrast may be 
observed between the speeches and 
the writings commonly attributed to 
Disraeli—the former virile, direct, and 
rapier-like, the latter so steeped in 
French affectations as to be ungram- 
matical from end to end. 

For these reasons I have not shrunk ~ 
from the assertion that the methods to 
the Higher Criticism may some day 
make havoc in the literature of the 
Victorian epoch. 


pie Soe ie Re 
Edinburgh University Press 
T. and A. ConsTABLE, Printers to Her Majesty 


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